Here is the story of my grandfather (on my mother's side). Yes, it has a point:
My grandfather was born in 1900. He was 14 when World War I broke out and 17 when America entered the fighting. He was 18 when the Spanish flu pandemic swept the world. He was 20 when the Palmer Raids and the associated red scare broke out. He was 25 during the Scopes trial and 29 during the St. Valentines Day massacre. He was 32 when the Great Depression got into full swing and the US banking system came within days of collapsing. He was 33 when famine killed millions in Ukraine and 34 when he lost his job as an electrician for Western Union and had to spend the rest of the decade as an elevator operator. He was 39 at the start of World War II—the biggest, most destructive war in human history.
My grandfather, Arthur Holliger, is on the far right in this 1940 photo. Next to him is my grandmother, Agnes. On the left are his brother and his wife. The freckled eight-year-old child is my mother.
He was 45 when, in the Pacific, the US detonated two atomic bombs over Japan. On the other side of the world the full horror of the Holocaust became public and the Soviet Union swallowed Eastern Europe. He was 47 when the Cold War started. He was 49 when communists took over China and the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb. The country would live under the specter of nuclear annihilation forever after that.
He was 50 when McCarthyism took over the country—the second red scare of his lifetime. He was 57 when Sputnik was launched and 59 when famine killed upwards of 50 million people in China. He was 62 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 63 when a president was assassinated, 64 when Tonkin Gulf ignited the Vietnam War in earnest, and 65 when the Watts Riots broke out a few miles from his home. He was 68 when both a presidential candidate and the country's preeminent civil rights leader were assassinated. He was 74 when Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate. He was 78 when Three Mile Island melted down and 79 when hostages were taken in Iran. He was 80 when gasoline prices doubled and inflation hit 15%. He was 86 when Chernobyl melted down.
A few years later he died.
I promised you a point. Here it is: stop whining. Young adults today have lived through 9/11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a severe recession, and then Donald Trump. Currently Ukraine and Israel are at war.
Has this been a traumatic era? A time of polycrisis and the decline of democracy? Please. Today's problems are pinpricks compared to the 20th century. The Spanish Flu killed 50 million people globally—nearly 3% of the total population. During the Great Depression unemployment peaked at about 25% and wages fell by nearly half. In 1942 the world was down to nine democracies—and 80 million people had to die before democracy finally won the day. The Holocaust killed two-thirds of the Jews in Europe. The Cold War lasted 45 years and immiserated hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Sure, we have problems. But even taken altogether they're just not that big. The Great Recession peaked at 10% unemployment and stayed above 5% for seven years—compared to 11% and 27 years between 1970 and 1997. Wages for blue-collar workers went up during the Great Recession compared to a 7% decline during the Volcker Recession and a 40% decline during the Great Depression. The combination of 9/11 and both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars killed about 10,000 Americans over a decade—the toll from a single year of Vietnam or a single month of WWII. COVID was half as deadly as the Spanish Flu in the US and a thirtieth as deadly worldwide. There are ten times as many democracies in the world as there were 80 years ago—and fears to the contrary notwithstanding, they're in pretty good shape. Racism may still be our original sin, but it's plummeted compared to the days of Jim Crow, redlining, literacy tests, and Bull Connor. Our standard of living is triple what it was at the start of the postwar era. Inflation recently rose above 5% for two years, but that compares to nine consecutive years from 1973-82. The murder rate spiked to 6.8 per 100,000 a couple of years ago but is still a third less than it was three decades ago.
Now tell me again about your polycrisis and your trauma. I'm listening.
While we were in Colorado our cats were lounging around at my sister's house. So instead of catblogging today we have dogblogging.
This is Freckles, a furry dachshund who belongs to our friend Susan in Durango. Freckles is shy and only truly feels safe curled up with Susan, which is exactly what she's doing in this picture.
The eight House Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy made their colleagues an offer today: Vote Jim Jordan for speaker and punish us https://t.co/aTJC3HlUBO
"Punish us"? Seriously? Is this some kind of masochistic Republican ritual just now coming to light?
I have no idea why these folks think their colleagues would be willing to vote for Jim Jordan if only they could take a swat at the eight rebels who caused the whole Speaker debacle in the first place, but there you have it. If you're nuts, you're nuts, I guess.
However there is a different read on this. I admit I'm stretching, but maybe this is a sign that the Gang of Eight are feeling some remorse over ousting Kevin McCarthy. Perhaps it's leading up to a scenario where McCarthy stands for Speaker again and is elected unanimously in a glorious show of Republican unity. Stranger things have happened.
The FBI has released final crime figures for 2022. Murder was down 7%:
Because of changes in the FBI's methodology, it's still not clear if the 2020-22 numbers are all comparable to each other. Nevertheless, the trend is pretty clear, and it's one I've noted before: violent crime was basically stable while homicide spiked up. This remains a mystery after decades of the murder and violent crime rates moving almost identically.
Why would murder spike so dramatically if overall violent crime was showing almost no movement at all? I've pondered this before and come up with nada, and nada is still all I have. It is a perplexing mystery.
Just like yesterday, good news comes in pairs. Kenneth Chesebro has pleaded guilty to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. He was the guy who came up with the fake electors scheme, and his plea deal requires him to face only a single felony charge instead of the original seven. He has also agreed to testify against everyone else.
So that's three down out of 19 in the Georgia case. Demanding an expedited trial really hasn't worked out well for folks. We'll see how the others do later in the year.
Third time's the charm? Nope. Jim Jordan has gone from 200 votes to 199 to 194. I really don't think Speaker of the House is in his future. Surely it's time for Plan D?
The New York Times reports that along with concerns about some of the guests booked to be on The Problem With Jon Stewart,Stewart’s intended discussions of artificial intelligence and China were a major concern for Apple. Though new episodes of the show were scheduled to begin shooting in just a few weeks, staffers learned today that production had been halted.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, ahead of its decision to end The Problem,Apple approached Stewart directly and expressed its need for the host and his team to be “aligned” with the company’s views on topics discussed. Rather than falling in line when Apple threatened to cancel the show, Stewart reportedly decided to walk.
Financially, this makes complete sense: Good relations with China are worth at least a thousand times more to Apple than Stewart's program. And they must have done this knowing perfectly well what would happen. Stewart has plenty of fame and money and doesn't need the Apple gig. There was zero chance he'd stick around if Apple started dictating what he could and couldn't say.
Still, understandable or not, it's discouraging as hell. Apple now joins outfits like Tesla and the NBA that tiptoe around all things China because they depend so much on China for revenue. In the end, it's self-defeating for China to have a reputation that makes this kind of tiptoeing common, but that's small solace in the here and now. Who knows how long it will take China to become confident enough that it can accept everyday criticism without having a temper tantrum?
CVS Health is pulling some of the most common decongestants from its shelves and will no longer sell them, after advisers to U.S. health regulators recently determined that an ingredient doesn’t work. The products contain oral phenylephrine, an almost-century-old ingredient in versions of decongestants and over-the-counter pills, syrups and liquids to clear up congested noses.
CVS is doing this because the FDA has concluded that phenylephrine pills don't work. The problem is that they get metabolized in the gut before the drug has a chance to enter the bloodstream.
But that's only pills. In my previous post about phenylephrine I failed to mention that it works fine in nasal spray form. So I figure this is as good a time as any to correct that.
On Monday I showed you Chimney Rock silhouetted against Saturday's eclipse. Today I'll show you a more conventional view. In fact, I'll show you two Chimney Rocks. The top one is south of Cortez; the bottom one is an official national monument southwest of Pagosa Springs.
October 12, 2023 — Chimney Rock, ColoradoOctober 15, 2023 — Chimney Rock National Monument, Colorado
